Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday June 09, 2011 @08:50PM
from the well-played-sir-well-played dept.

decora writes "NPR, and dozens of other media sources, are reporting that NSA IT whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake is innocent of all 10 original charges against him; including the 5 Espionage Act charges for 'retention' of 'national defense information.' Drake stared down the government to the last minute, rejecting deal after deal, because he 'refused to plea bargain with the truth.' The judge had even recently ruled that there was no evidence that Drake passed classified information to a reporter. In the end, he has agreed that he committed a misdemeanor: 'unauthorized access to a computer.' It is unknown what this means for the other non-spy espionage cases that Obama's DOJ currently has pending (Kim, Sterling, Manning), or the Grand Jury that is currently meeting to discuss Espionage Act charges related to WikiLeaks."

It was enemies of the USA that wasted time and taxpayers money bringing him to trial in the first place - they just happen to be on the US payroll. They are not going to be happy and external forces are really not going to give a shit either way about a conveniently guy some lazy spooks grabbed because doing their real job requires too much hard work.

While would they be happy about it? Drake obviously committed no espionage. I am pretty sure our enemies are planning to commit actual espionage and not merely to do whistle blowing in order to improve our government agencies.

You're a fool. The classified material that he "took" (according to him he forgot it was in his filing cabinet) was declassified months after he took it. All he did with it was let it sit around. For further information read this wonderful article from the Wall Street Journal. [newyorker.com]

Does the phrase "double jeopardy" ring any bells? No? Here....let me help: "Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction"

Does the phrase "double jeopardy" ring any bells? No? Here....let me help: "Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction"

GP would probably argue that Obama will also abolish double jeopardy, along with the Constitution of the United States and the Easter bunny..

And then he'll have Public Enemy write a new national anthem, make being Muslim mandatory for citizenship, elect himself lifelong emperor of the New United States of Blackness, and make being white a felony.[/sarcasm comment="sad that I feel the need for this tag"]

The accusation is made on the basis that the parent hates Obama, and is willing to say any thing, with or without justification. That's what partisanship is, it's a mental disease, a behavioral disorder.

Politicians come and go. They should always be challenged upon every decision they make, they need not be respected nor adored, in fact it is normal that a significant portion of the population dislike them, anything else stinks of corruption and grossly biased media.

What needs to be challenged in this case is an out of control bureaucracy, a willingness amongst it's members to pervert the course of law to feed their own ego and chances of promotion. The distortion is reflected in the change from policin

You can and should draw your own conclusions, but IMO this "Hylandr" is a seriously weird individual.

That may be the case, but what does it say about you that you went through all the trouble to build such a complex ad hom about someone who said something so ridiculous in the first place? As an AC, too. Emphasis on the C.

He's nutty, but you're the pot. Um. As in calling the kettle. You get my point. I hope.

““I actually had hopes for Obama, [...] but power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”

No one is reporting he is innocent. They reached a plea deal. The government dropped the 10 charges because a judge decided the prosecution would have to show classified material to the jury.
Dropping the charges because you don't have enough evidence to make a case (i.e. without using classified material) is not the same as deciding he is innocent.

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

IANAL, but AFAIK 'innocent' is never used in the US Justice System. So, if the government fails to prove he's guilty, then he is not guilty.

For example, one can very well be guilty but not found as such by a court of law. This is why the courts do not generally attempt to answer the question "is the defendant innocent?" Rather, the courts try to answer the question, "is there enough evidence to prove the defendant did this?"

This is why, at least in the US, you will sometimes see someone win a criminal case (get judged not-guilty) but then lose a civil case that presupposes that the defendant is, in fact, guilty. The criminal and civil courts te

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

IANAL, but AFAIK 'innocent' is never used in the US Justice System. So, if the government fails to prove he's guilty, then he is not guilty.

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

IANAL, but AFAIK 'innocent' is never used in the US Justice System. So, if the government fails to prove he's guilty, then he is not guilty.

What terminology the government uses is only relevant when reporting what the government says.

No one here should report that the government has determined him to be innocent.

This is not because the only thing that may be reported about an alleged criminal is that either we know for sure he did it (guilty) or that we can't prove that he did it (not guilty) which underhandedly implies that maybe he did do it, but we can't prove it.

The reason why we don't report that courts find defendants innocent is because

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

What an odd concept - reality is only what is agreed upon by judges and lawyers. Simply because someone isn't convicted doesn't mean they didn't do it. That used to be known as "getting away with it". Does that mean that everyone who is convicted actually did the crime?

Yes it is; you're innocent until proven guilty, regardless of how much prosecutors, police, and the government don't want to believe it sometimes. If the government can't be burdened to prove that he's guilty, he's innocent.

You're innocent until proven guilty in exactly the same way that you're alive until you're dead, i.e. by definition. I am innocent of all crimes that I have not been convicted of, it's just lazy thinking to start using "innocent" to mean anything else.
It is only in legal jurisdictions like Scotland where you have three possible decisions of "guilty", "not proven" and "innocent" that this is not true.

As everyone else has been saying, a defendant is never "found innocent" - they are found to be "not guilty", which is not the same thing. The prosecutor in OJ's case was unable to convince the jury that he was guilty; the defense did NOT get the jury to declare him innocent. People are found not guilty due to the lack of evidence that they're guilty (they either didn't do it, or got away with it), not found innocent because they couldn't have done it.

No one is reporting he is innocent. They reached a plea deal. The government dropped the 10 charges because a judge decided the prosecution would have to show classified material to the jury.

Dropping the charges because you don't have enough evidence to make a case (i.e. without using classified material) is not the same as deciding he is innocent.

One may report that he IS innocent because one is "presumed innocent" until "found guilty".

What one may not report (at least not conscientiously) is that he has been "found innocent" because that is not a determination that is made. It is not made because it does not need to be made, because of the same presumption. No one needs a judge or jury to return a finding of innocence, because it is presumed. The findings are "guilty" or "not guilty".

Um, no. In the US courts of law never prove innocence. This should be trivially obvious to anyone since no one involved in the trial is even attempting to prove innocence. The prosecution is attempting to prove guilt; the defense is attempting to show that the prosecution's argument is flawed. If someone came up with a proof that P = NP. And you found a flaw in that proof. Would you then claim that you've proved that P != NP because you found a flaw in the proof?

In the US courts of law you never have to prove innocence. It's the default starting position. Unless proven otherwise, that's what the defendant is. If the prosecution fails to prove you guilty, that's what you are.

If you are not convicted of a crime in the court of law, you are innocent. Period.

This is factually correct, no "Um, no" about it. If you're not being tried for anything, no one describes you as "not guilty." If you've been tried and acquitted, you're just as innocent as someone who hasn't

Not in the UK it doesn't. All you have to declare to employers or whoever are actual criminal convictions.
No doubt if you were applying to join MI6 or something they'd want to know about any crimes you'd been tried for but acquitted, but that's a different issue.

Which is why he lost that wrongful death civil case. Or, in other words, there are gray areas where people might be "legally innocent" in some contexts but not in others.

The presumption of innocence is not the same thing as being innocent. Only in very rare cases will a court contain a determination of innocence as part of a finding of fact. It's a bit like the position of an agnostic compared to a hard atheist. Just as the agnostic states "I don't know if God exists", the courts state "I don't know that th

When agreeing to a plea bargain, you have to say not only that you agree to the bargain, but that you are doing so because you actually are guilty. This is coercing a lie from innocent people who simply can't risk adding to their jail time if they have a weak case.

While I know they are a pillar of our judicial system, plea deals are nothing but subjective justice. You are either guilty or innocent.. not innocent of a lesser charge because we like you or can't prove our case or need you to squeel on someone bigger. I completely agree with the OP that lies are coerced every day for fear of what will happen if you dont tell the truth the way the enforcement wants to hear it and the soul crushing weight of cash required to fight even the smallest incidents is in itself a

You'd be fucking stupid to agree to a plea bargain if you were actually innocent. And it doesn't matter if you have a weak defence case (or none at all) it's up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt you were guilty, which is difficult if you didn't actually do it, as you don't get convicted on flimsy circumstantial evidence alone.

If you shine a light on government waste, incompetence or malfeasance be prepared for the government to use its unlimited checkbook and unaccountable law enforcement types to make your life a living hell.

That's one reason Britain still has a House of Lords. You can't bribe 'em and you can't "disappear" 'em. It's also why Britain keeps trying to get rid of said House and replace it with one that you CAN bribe or vanish. As imperfect as it is (it would be better if it were a true meritocratic House), it has prevented some of the more spectacular abuses of power seen elsewhere. Not all, sure. England has more CCTV cameras than people, they totally failed to prevent any of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad abuses, and so on.

Nonetheless, the US' complete lack of any independent oversight or meritocratic branch is precisely why it was possible for the more gratuitous abuses to have taken place. Everyone in power needs to curry favour from everyone else in power far more than they need anything to actually work.

What spectacular abuses of power has the House of Lords prevented? I'm curious; the Wikipedia page wasn't helpful.

I'm not convinced that a house of "betters" is a good element of a checks and balances systems. I'm pretty sure I think the majority of my "betters" in terms of peerage are people I disagree with vehemently on many issues and, overall, nutters. I'm not sure why you'd be unable to bribe them, either: sure, they're wealthy, but that just means bribing them is a tad more expensive. If they're suffi

Nonetheless, the US' complete lack of any independent oversight or meritocratic branch is precisely why it was possible for the more gratuitous abuses to have taken place. Everyone in power needs to curry favour from everyone else in power far more than they need anything to actually work.

The US Senate used to serve a very similar role to the House of Lords. It was appointed by the state legislatures without the advice or consent of "The People(tm)" because it was supposed to represent the interest of the i

England has more CCTV cameras than people, they totally failed to prevent any of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad abuses, and so on.

Well, the members of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad probably weren't stupid enough to perform their abuses in the middle of Dudley High Street or wherever the fucking CCTV cameras would actually be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Thomas_Andrews_Drake [wikipedia.org]
Notice that the wikipedia entry for Mr. Drake states that "he was found innocent" even though Decora has failed to provide a reference indicating of the judgement where the man was found innocent. Also notice in the "talk" section of the aforementioned wiki entry how other editors question the validity of the entries made by Decora, as well as the fact that the entries sound more like opinions of statements rather than facts.

Not that I have anything against Mr. Drake (and I applaud him for being a whistleblower), but there is nothing in the case that indicates a judgement of innocence. It is juvenile, subjective, and pretty much fucking stupid to use both wikipedia and./ to pass an Op.Ed as a statement of historical fact.

Someone (Decora) who tell others to find their own references

you can find that in the various secondary sources im just too lazy to go re-reference them. i am going to edit and put back

in the wiki talk page when confronted with the lack of good reference materials, it someone I would take his words from with a grain of salt.

OK, Wikipedia soapbox here. As I've said before and elsewhere, only someone who is, well, naive would believe that Wikipedia editors have a NPOV. Face it, they're not paid. Why then do all the hours of time-consuming work if they're not paid? Because they are paid, just not monetarily; they have a strong incentive to edit. Some do it altruistically, for the good of a community encyclopaedic resource. Others do it to promote a certain POV, namely, one with which they (strongly) agree. These editors ar

So... Wikipedia editors read a misleading newspaper article, and to fact-check their "research" they did... what...? With this evidence, it's hard to uphold Wikipedia as a true encyclopaedia in "disputed" areas like this.

Frankly, if I were editing on Wikipedia I'd rather be recognized as having a non-NPOV than prove myself an idiot. Wouldn't you?

Thomas Drake will plead guilty to exceeding authorized use of a computer, a misdemeanor, and the government will drop 10 felony counts that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, according to court documents. In return, prosecutors say they won't oppose a sentence that spares the 54-year-old Maryland man a prison term.

I edited wikipedia , to make it hopefully much more neutral. Thanks for the tip.

As for the slashdot story, I believe that Thomas Drake's innocence is not opinion. I believe that it is a fact. If you have 10 counts against you, and they are all dropped, then you are innocent of them. Several readers have pointed this follows from the 'innocent until proven guilty' meme (which i hadn't thought of, but is a good argument...) do you disagree? Just because I am biased does not mean I am factually wrong, does it?

I believe the slashdot headline compares favorably in accurate to the other mainstream news headlines that are currently crowding around cyberspace.

Many of these statments are misleading, or flat out wrong, and most of them imply things that are factually incorrect. Thomas Drake was never, ever, not even once, charged with 'leaking'. There is no law against 'leaking'. There are several laws covering 'disclosure' or 'delivery' of information, but he was not charged with one of those laws either. Why? Because they had no good evidence that he ever delivered any classified information to anyone. He specifically took precautions against divulging classified information to anyone - that was part of his agreement with Gorman of the Baltimore Sun - that he wouldn't give her any information.

Now, the DOJ indictment of him contains a lot of statements about 'giving classified information to a reporter', but when they actually brought criminal charges, none of those charges was for 'leaking' or 'disclosure' or 'delivery' of information. A statement is a totally different thing from a charge. Thus, any headline that says he was 'charged with leaking' or 'charged with disclosure' is misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst.

As for this word 'classified', it is also wrong. The Espionage Act 793(e) does not even use the word 'classified', it uses the phrase "national defense information". This is an important distinction, because only a jury can decide if a defendant's information counted as 'national defense information'. And this typically refers to serious military stuff, like diagrams of ships or something - that is what the law was refering to when Congress created it in 1917, and when Congress created its forefather the Defense Secrets Act in 1911, and what Congress intended when it amended the Espionage Act in 1950. And as Schmidt and Edgar point out in their famous 1973 Columbia Law article, Congress has repeatedly refused or failed to blanketly criminalize the posession or delivery of classified information - as Elsea points out in her 2010 CRS article, there is a 'patchwork' of laws, because Congress itself, and the President, love to leak classified information to the media. Thus, every headline that uses the word 'charged with leaking classified info' in relation to Drake's case is factually incorrect. He was never, not even once, charged with any law that contains the word 'classified' anywhere in it.

Again, the indictment makes a lot of statements about 'giving classified information to a reporter' (Which the judge ruled there was no evidence of). Even the headline of the DOJ news release might say things about 'classified information'. It is not my fault that the DOJ lawyers cannot read the Espionage Act. And again, a statement in an indcitment is a totally different thing from a criminal charge.

Lastly I'd like to cover the implications, the sort of tone and demeanor, of the language of the many articles floating around the web.

They seem to imply the story here is that a 'leaker' had to 'plead to a lesser charge'. That is utterly misleading. Another view of the story, one that I believe will be in the history books, is that the government, after a case that started when Bush demanded the FBI find the NS

Suppose for the sake of argument that there is a murder, and no one is ever charged with the crime for lack of evidence[though there is no doubt that there was in fact a murder]. Does this mean that everyone is innocent of murder? This seems impossible. Someone logically must be guilty. And yet that[that no one is guilty] seems to be precisely what you are arguing.

Your argument begins with the presumption that a crime has taken place: a murder.

As analogy this is broken, because there is no presumption here that any crime has been committed by anyone, so there is no need for any one individual to be "guilty" with or without a finding.

However were we to engage the example fully, we have to draw a demarcation between the word innocent in casual use, which is understood to mean "did not commit a crime" and its use in the legal and political realms. The presumption of inn

Your argument fails at your definition of "guilty". Someone isn't guilty because you think they are. You can only ever be guilty of a crime if you are found so in a court of law. It gets interesting when you appeal (IANAL - will you end up in a sort of "suspended guilty" state?), but that's not the case here.

Until such time as there is a formal conviction, someone is assumed innocent. A lesson the assorted press still hasn't learned either, leading to the destruction of lives of people that *were* innoc

I agree with you in principle - someone can be guilty even if they're not proven guilty in a court of law.

But we must ask ourselves: is there any reason to believe Drake was guilty in this case? The charges were apparently brought forth by the NSA as revenge for Drake's (legal) leaks to congress. It seems at least as likely the charges are completely unsubstantiated, as there being some sort of substance to them.

I edited wikipedia , to make it hopefully much more neutral. Thanks for the tip.

As for the slashdot story, I believe that Thomas Drake's innocence is not opinion. I believe that it is a fact.

In that case, express it as a opinion (that YOU believe it is a fact) instead of putting it as a fact (as a legal judgement) being reported in the media and in the references you previously provided (none of which made that statement.) I do believe the man is innocent as well, but there has been no legal judgement expressing so. And none of the references you made in the media claim "innocence" as a piece of news.

You misrepresented (pretty much lied) the statements made by NPR and other news outlets to pr

This is a big fat witch hunt by bureaucrats with too much ego and power at their disposal. There (was) a good complete article on this complete story over at the New Yorker [newyorker.com]. Short recap: the NSA has had running for a number of years a project called Echelon which sucks in every bit of email, cell phone, satellite and any other type of electronic communication and tries to process in (they called all the electronic eavesdropping "total information awareness") --Carnivore and Omnivore installations at AT&T sites are part of this--. Now this left them with a great big haystack and finding needles turned into a big pain. One crypt analyst came up with a solution and called it 'thin thread'. It was rejected by the current bureaucracy because they had another project already underway called trailblazer. So this 'thin thread' project was on the shelf. People got re-assigned and it time passed. Trailblazer failed after a few years and a few hundred million dollars. Thin thread was pulled off the shelf, but since the original team had already been reassigned, new people were working on it. Some careful controls that limits spying on Americans was built into the original version. The powers that be went out of their way to spy on Americans (even though thats not part of the NSA mandate, and illegal). The original developers protesters complained, then left. The witch hunt that followed is part the Thomas Drake trial. ---sorry for the long blurb, the New Yorker piece is 10 pages, and there is a lot of dirt I left out--,Sincerely (hello you NSA people!),Anonymous Coward.

When he's claiming the right to summarily execute [aljazeera.net] and/or imprison without trial [bradleymanning.org] American citizens, yes, I'd say he's riding roughshod over the Constitution. Now, George W Bush was a bit different, in that he just claimed the right to lock up and possibly torture [wikipedia.org] US citizens without trial, and a lot of people howled that he was riding roughshod over the Constitution, but it's safe to say that right now riding roughshod over the Constitution is bipartisan.

That's not what he is talking about. Findings of a jury or of a judge trial is not whether someone is innocent, but whether they are guilty or not guilty of the charges. There is a difference [blogspot.com].

No, you aren't assumed innocent. The courts are supposed to presume innocence while in front of a jury. There is no "duty" for anyone not actively presenting to a jury while a court is in session to presume or assume innocence.

Further, assuming (or presuming) something is irrelevant to whether it's true. OJ killed Nicole. He is guilty of that act. He was found not guilty in a court of law. None of those are contradictory statements of fact (whether they are true is something that can be debated elsewhere).

If the cops presumed you innocent, they'd never arrest you. If the prosecutor presumed you innocent, they'd never file charges. If the judge presumed you innocent, he'd not let the trial proceed. The presumption of innocence is what the jury is supposed to do, and nobody else in the entire system (and certainly nobody outside the justice system) is expected to presume innocence, though they are expected to act that way under reasonable rules of the court when in front of the jury.

Police - No, but there is no other way we could have missed it, the killer would have left a trail of blood. Since the suspect did it and we didn't find a trail of blood the only possible explanation is that he destroyed the evidence. To deny this warrant would be to reward him for c

Requiring due process isn't a presumption of innocence. It's a requirement of due process. The process doesn't presume innocence. It is designed more to prove guilt while meeting the bare minimum Constitutional protections.

Due process doesn't presume innocence, but the police don't decide the law, they only enforce it. As the court makes the final decision when it renders the verdict, the presumption of innocence by that court until such time as guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt means that according to the law of the land the accused is presumed innocent until such time as guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Theoretically.

This also means that if the prosecution fails to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,

Anyone and everyone can at that point start believing the accused was actually guilty,

Anyone and everyone can presume guilt or innocence long before that. Opinions are never dictated by the government, not what they should be, nor when you can hold them.

While there is valid philosophical argument separating the terms "innocent" and "not guilty", the point is moot in the context of criminal law.

No, the point is quite relevant. The courts do not decide whether one is "innocent" and in fact people have been found responsible beyond a preponderance of the evidence, but not beyond a reasonable doubt (see OJ). Though I agree one of those isn't criminal, the point is clear that the level of proof is all that the courts determine. They

Anyone and everyone can presume guilt or innocence long before that. Opinions are never dictated by the government, not what they should be, nor when you can hold them.

I think you're mixing up the common mis-use of "presumption" to mean "assumption". A presumption in the legal sense is something that you take as being true in the absence of evidence to the contrary, not just a random opinion based on your own prejudices.

They had no case. He was a source for Congress and others within our government on a massive NSA wiretapping program to make government recording all of our plaintext emails look like the the purest product of enlightenment and benevolence, probably the creepiest secret surveillance program of the modern era.

The only upside compared to other systems is that because we live in the US, and we have a strong federal judiciary and some strong de jure personal freedoms, the results of the surveillance are only r

They had no case. He was a source for Congress and others within our government on a massive NSA wiretapping program to make government recording all of our plaintext emails look like the the purest product of enlightenment and benevolence, probably the creepiest secret surveillance program of the modern era.

Maybe NSA did have a case, but if they wanted to make that case, they would have had to admit that the allegations were essentially true. Unacceptable option.

But even if the allegations were completely bogus, confirming that would be just as bad a leak in terms of exposing NSA's capabilities. Equally unacceptable option.

It was a classic Catch-22. (Best catch there is.) Both sides get to walk away with a win: NSA keeps its secrets to itself, and Yossarian lives. Well-played on both sides.

I saw a man upon a stair
A man in court who wasn't there
To testify for NSA.
(The winning move was not to play.)

Really depends how they wanted to be seen. Well outside the US, mess with telco in a public way, your suicided.
The UK and US have faced people in court before. Their great fear is the press about the global reach of intercepts.
The UK never wants another ABC trial, Aubrey/Berry and Campbell put quality public information on the GCHQ together and where taken to court on a "secrets" change in the late 1970's.
The NSA faced the same over the years, then you had the Sibel Edmonds in the US, Katharine Gun in

It's true that a few of the charges were dropped due to the prosecution not wanting to release classified information, but that was only after they dropped other charges (the ones related to his giving out the info) due to lack of evidence. And the few remaining charges were apparently too shaky for the prosecutors to take to trial.

I have to admit that the bash side of my brain appreciates your quotation marks. In any case, I checked out Merriam-Webster to see what the real language nazis think about !guilty?=innocent, and they indicate that guilty is a near antonym of innocent [merriam-webster.com], and not an exact antonym. That is the most heartwarming experience I have ever had with a dictionary.

> I don't get it. Do/.ers not understand the basics of the U.S. legal system (a rhetorical question...)?

Of course they don't. We don't teach law in our school system, for the most part. If you ask someone how a bill becomes a law, they will say it has to be approved by a majority of congress and signed by the president--but the reality is a lot more politics, industry groups, committee activity, anonymous holds, riders, earmarks, comments, a lot of meaningless fluff to be sound bytes, a lot of time on

Treason is very difficult to prove. Drake wasn't even charged with Treason. Espionage is less difficult to prove, but the government lacked compelling evidence for those charge as well. And so on it it went, down the line, until what was left was "unauthorized use of a computer". I suppose that if "ex post facto laws" were not unconstitutional, the feds might have been able to invent the crime of "similar to espionage", but they can't.

According to the US Government, Drake is neither a spy, nor a traitor.

If he did indeed pass the data, he isn't a hero, he is most likely a traitor, or at the very least guilty of espionage, wire fraud, or some other similar charge. That makes him an enemy of the US.

So there's no place for whistle-blowers in your world?

Sure he may have done the things you mention (though the courts didn't find proof), but to expose the largest, most blatant illegal wiretapping operation EVER, it was worth it ("public interest" and all that).

Though, it is interesting to note, that the government gave themselves a "get out of jail free card" for this operation (see FISA 2008 [wikipedia.org]) but apparently this guy wasn't included in their alternate reality where spying isn't bad.

I'm guessing you favored Nixon behaving like a king with no rule of law and attempting to distory the democratic process to stay in power with no one ever finding out. You should be ashamed of such a horrible opinion.

He did indeed "pass the data". To the Inspector General who was investigating the abuse of wiretaps. Whatever "proof" the government had that he passed it to a reporter was so Top Seeeekrit that the judge couldn't be allowed to see it under seal.

Which probably means that if that super-secret evidence (of a prior event that wasn't so secret the government could not press charges and claim publicly that this event happened) ever actually existed, the only excuse I can think of

Given that the Politburo is the one source not paying NPR a damn thing these days, and given NPR's unnerving willingness to broadcasting material embarassing to the government far in excess of those media sources who you personally pay to tell you what's going on, you might want to consider which source is actually in the public's interest.